Magaki suru Hida no takumi no tatsukioto no ana kashigamashi nazo ya yo no naka

English Translation

The Hida workmen
building the fence — the sound of
their adzes on wood
how it clatters, how it grates
Why must the world be like this

Meaning

The Hida carpenters building the fence — the clatter of their adzes. How it grates. Why must the world be like this?

Commentary

43 The Sound of the Adze

The holy man Eshū had a fence put up in front of the place he was using as his cell. On the shavings the carpenters left he wrote "Magaki suru Hida no takumi no tatsukioto no ana kashigamashi nazo ya yo no naka", said he would go off into the deep mountains to practise, and left. Some time later, asked where in the deep mountains he had shut himself away, he answered "Nani bakari fukaku mo arazu yo no tsune no Hie o toyama to miru bakari nari". He was at Yokawa. That is the whole of the section.
Eshū is the priest of the forty-second section, where he serves a woman as her exorcist and becomes the subject of talk. Yokawa is a part of Mount Hiei, one of the three precincts together with the eastern and western pagodas.
The setting is the cell where Eshū was living, with a fence going up in front of it and carpenters at work.
What prompted the poem was the noise of that work. He wrote it on the shavings they had left.
Having written it, he said he was going into the deep mountains and left. The section goes on to the poem he sent when asked where he had gone.

The Hida carpenters building a fence come from a long tradition: craftsmen of that province were famous for their woodwork and had long appeared in poetry.
The word in the third line is the adze, and what is named is its sound. These three lines work as a preface leading into the word that follows.
That word is an exclamation: how it clatters. He is speaking of the tools in front of him and passing straight into the noise of the world.
The closing is a complaint — why must it be so? Taken with the rumour of the forty-second section, the clatter is not only the adzes. Writing this on the shavings and walking away is of a piece with what the poem says.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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